


My Journey, My Discovery by Helga Geraldine Pataki

by Holmesslice



Category: Hey Arnold!
Genre: Epiphanies, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Gen, High School, Male-Female Friendship, Memoirs, Post The Jungle Movie, Self-Discovery, True Love, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-05
Updated: 2013-11-18
Packaged: 2017-12-25 16:40:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/955391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Holmesslice/pseuds/Holmesslice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Helga goes on a path of self-discovery written for a contest in her high school.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is going to be a multi-chapter work. I'm going to shoot for around 70k to 80k memoir. I am trying very hard to capture Helga's spirit and character. Please leave kudos and comments. Let me know what you think. Thank you so much :)

**My Journey, My Discovery  
by Helga Geraldine Pataki**

 

_I like to think that somewhere out there, on a planet exactly like ours,  
two people exactly like you and me made totally different choices  
and that, somewhere, we're still together.  
That's enough for me._  
–Iain Thomas, "The Twins"

_We need, in love, to practice only this: letting each other go.  
For holding on comes easily; we do not need to learn it._  
–Rainer Maria Rilke, "Requiem For a Friend"

_When you give someone your whole heart and he  
doesn't want it, you cannot take it back.  
It's gone forever._  
–Sylvia Plath, quoted by Elizabeth Sigmund in "Sylvia in Devon: 1962,"  
in Edward Butscher's Sylvia Plath: The Woman and the Work

The First Steps to Self-Discovery: The scariest thing I am about to do

I could talk about how when I was merely three years old I had found true love. A true love that was so epic it would quite literally shaped my entire childhood. A true love that would expand my creative, artistic soul and at the same time limit my horizon like a horse wearing blinders. A true love so profound that I can quite honestly describe the first eleven years in one word: football-shaped. A very odd way of describing a childhood as football-shaped and I'd presently agree. However I've never been much of anything but I was definitely odd.

I could talk about how true love existed in the form of a kind-hearted, compassionate young boy. This young three year old boy who had shown true, unadulterated altruism in a world of negligent parents, a perfectionist older sister, and one rather mean, lunch-stealing dog. However what would the fun be in talking about that alone?

I'm not here to be mushy and romantic. Don't get me wrong, I am very much a romantic deep, deep down. Underneath all the layers of my personality lives a romantic girl afraid of vulnerability. My heart yearns for romance but fears the complications of leaving my chest wide open for any surgeon to have their way. What better way to hide said vulnerability than by acting snarly, mean, rude and forever scowling at the world. Despite all of this that sweet little boy always seemed to easily break through and see glimpses of the real me.

The real me that wanted a great, sweeping masterpiece about love in all its depth, madness, passion, and complexity. I wanted to write and create great, sweeping love stories. I wanted to create my own Byronic heroes complete with mysterious castles, secrets held by the staff, and the one crazed woman who lived in a tower. The real me that wanted to believe in something more than what I had experienced throughout my life. I wanted to believe that love could conquer all, that love at first sight existed, that love was as if I had found the other half that would complement me and all of my faults the way I'd complement them.

That is the kind of love I want. I want the mushy, romantic kind of love because as Barbara Streisand said in "A Mirror Has Two Faces" it feels "fucking great." More than that I want a love that will sustain the good and bad times. I want a love that will be so strong and enduring that it's this love that sustains me when we're going through a rough patch, or dealing with a crisis. I want the kind of love where I love the person when they're eating breakfast, saying hello or goodnight, when we're grocery shopping, that whatever we do is a sign of love. I don't want flowers, and declarations of love. I want to be the Annie that finds my Danny. Every time I watch that Story Corps video about this amazing couple I realize that it exists, it truly exists, and damn it all if I don't get it.

The love I had witnessed in my life was filth, corrupted, damaged and destructive. The love I had experienced personally was selfish, mean, angry, and neglectful. Growing up I'd walk to school or take the bus and wonder if my family had ever truly loved me. I'd have so many thoughts, that no child ought to be burdened with, growing up.

I wondered if I had been an accident, the "oops" pregnancy. I long concluded that I had to have been given the disparaging age difference between my sister and me. As I bloomed into adolescence my father only grew meaner and would often tell me that I was unplanned and an unwanted pregnancy. I wondered if Miriam had issues against abortions and the fact that I am writing this introduction is testament to this fact. I wonder what could have resulted in Miriam giving birth to me when my parents held such anathema towards each other even from when I was a young toddler. The fact I had the signature "Pataki look" consisting of a unibrow, which I've long since waxed and shaped, means I am my father's daughter even if he wishes otherwise.

I know what I want and I know that I will refuse to settle. I've seen what settling does. My mother settled and had her spirit literally strangled until the only spirit she had left came out of a bottle. I know that for some settling in love may be fine or satisfying, but sometimes it is unsatisfying, sometimes it is depressing and sometimes it can be destructive. I cannot and will not take the risk of my very livelihood and spirit and if it means never finding the one then I know that I never once gave up.

The purpose of my book is to put it all out there. I need to put every last breath, emotion, event, everything out into the universe. I need to lay bare the very soul that beats deep within buried by pain, shame and embarrassment. I may be a seventeen year old scant in the experiences of love, life, and the world around me. However I want to believe that ripping off the bandages of this splintered heart will allow me to mend and move on. These fissures have cracked throughout my whole self and caused an ache that has only dulled in time but is always there. I want to heal, mend and not have this constant ache in my heart.

I want to believe that there is some gleam of wisdom I can dig out of the history of my very short, but interesting and unrequited, love life. Love isn't always rainbows and glitter. Love isn't always cheerful. Love isn't always like some Hallmark card. Love can sometimes grow ugly. Sometimes love can be at its birth, its inception, its first spark of existence be true and pure but warp as it ages. Love can be warped, corrupted, made deviant if it is ill-nurtured. I know this because my love of that football-shaped boy had become warped over the course of my childhood.

My book is going to brutally tear me open. I am going to lay at everyone's feet the story of my life and the truth of my secrets. I may never recover from this experience. What I do know for certainty is that I will not recover if I keep all of this deep inside me. Gnawing from the inside out like carrion-beetles laying waste to a carcass until there is nothing left but bones. Writing this book may have the same result but I know that, as cliché as the saying goes, what does not kill me will make me stronger.

This will not be an easy process for me. I have always been taught to keep my emotions close and shut off from others. I had the "Pataki pride" to uphold. I have done and acted in ways that have hurt others who have hurt me and angered me. Most shamefully I have hurt those I loved most, those who I would give my life to, like my best friend.  
The fact that my best friend Phoebe has thus far been so patient with me, so caring, so long suffering but still willing to stand up to me is such a blessing. More than I think she realizes. Something I hope she knows, and if not, something I must remedy immediately.

I was more than a bully. I was a girl who acted self-defensively to protect myself. In protecting myself I caused a lot of pain from my harsh words to my nicknamed clenched fists. I directed much of this bullying to the "love of my life." I would often distance myself from the few that cared for me.

Then there is simply the fact that I am utterly embarrassed about how I behaved in the secret expression of my love. This is the area that I am going to openly discuss. I have kept this part of me secret for too long. It's festered like an open wound seeping its pus into my soul and heart, making it difficult for me to find peace, move on, and love another. I have allowed this to warp myself and to take over my life. It's been the millstone around my neck. It's been long enough, I must cut the rope and set myself free.

I'm going to steal back my heart.

 

_I can't steal his heart_  
but I can steal back mine  
I can steal back mine  
I can steal back mine  
I can't steal his heart  
but I can steal back mine  
–Emily and the Woods – "Steal His Heart"


	2. In the beginning there was a girl called Helga

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the second chapter to Helga's memoir. Enjoy! This memoir will be playing a big part in my other story, "Helga's Favorite Flavor of Ice Cream" in a few different characters. Let me know what you think of the poem. I'm not a poet by nature but I am trying to write that part of Helga. :)

 

  
**My Journey, My Discovery**   
**by Helga Geraldine Pataki**

  
_Why one writes is a question I can easily answer, having so often asked it myself. I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live. I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me—the world of my parents, the world of war, the world of politics. I had to create a world of my own like a climate, a country, an atmosphere where I could breathe, reign, and recreate myself when destroyed by living. That I believe is reason of every work of art. We also write to heighten our awareness of life. We write to lure, enchant, and to console others. We write to serenade. We write to taste life twice, once in the moment and once in retrospection. We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it. We write to teach ourselves to speak to others, to record the journey into the labyrinth. We write to expand our world when we feel strangled or restricted or lonely. If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it._  
–Anaïs Nin, "A New Woman"

  
_Poetry doesn't belong to those who write it; it belongs to those who need it._  
–Massimo Troisi, in Il Postino

 

**In the beginning there was a girl called Helga**

 

Let me start from the beginning. Not in a Facebook fashion where it scrolls all the way down to the day when I was born because when and where is irrelevant. In many ways my life truly began when I was three years old. From that very moment onward when I met that little boy who complemented my bow because it matched my pants, everything changed. My world had gotten a little bit bigger, a little bit brighter, and a little bit more tolerable. The capacity for love and to show love had increased in me. The sudden realization that everyone needed a little bit of love had entered me like a seed yearning to germinate and grow. Even now that little seed has been struggling to fully bloom.

 

When I met Arnold that rainy day I had fallen in love. I had found my muse for the fledgling artist that lived deep within me. Arnold had continued to be nice to me and I fell deeper in love the way a three year old knows how: courageously and unabashedly. After a classmate stole my graham crackers, which is still my favorite food, Arnold had given me his share. He had noticed what had happened. He had noticed my sadness. He wanted to rid of my trembling lips and overflowing tears. I was so elated and overcome with emotion. Then the teasing started by the same boy who had stolen my snack. He mimicked my lovesick sigh and the tilt of my head on my clasped hands.

 

It was then that I felt ashamed for my actions. It was then that I had the comments running in my mind of my dad's words about the "Pataki" pride. I sometimes wonder what would have happened had I not been so afraid, had I not been so ashamed of being in love or love itself, had I not worried about pretense and image in front of others. These fears started so long ago. I was barely toilet trained, barely turning four years old, barely beginning to understand the world and yet these fears were crippling me. I grew angrier by the minute. I hated that I had been wrong. Showing my mushy side only left me embarrassed and scared that Arnold would be teased as well. I made a decision to put a stop to the teasing. I approached that snack-stealing boy and pushed him down onto the floor.

 

It was that moment that I chose to be a bully. It was at that moment I'd close off my real self, and emotions less I'd be teased, have it used against me, or used against the one I loved. I continued my reign of terror against my classmates. However I would hide whenever possible and speak of Arnold the way a three year old could before learning to be more artistic and add more flourish. The kind of prose that was straight to the point the way most children are at that age. "I love you Arnold and I want to marry you." Blunt and straight to the point, but it was true. I loved Arnold deeply and wanted to marry him in the future.

 

The secret prose that I would gush out of my soul was accompanied by a picture of Arnold taped onto a light pink heart with ruffled purple paper. Creating this first memento was my first big adventure in my expression of love. I had hidden a small pair of scissors in the pocket of my pink jumper. While everyone had run out for recess I claimed I had to go to the bathroom. I went to my cubby conveniently located next to Arnold's claiming I needed my hand-me-down teddy bear. I stole a sheet of pictures from his cubby. In the girls bathroom I cut out one picture and threw out the rest. I couldn't leave a sheet with one picture cut out, that would have looked suspicious. Though I did wonder at the time if I should have kept them all. I kept the memento in my pocket close to my rapid pitter-pattering heart. I still have that memento in a memory box under my bed. It reminds me of a time when things were simpler.

 

For the next few years my prose became a little bit more elaborate. As I learned about the poetry that we all learn as children during Valentine's Day. "Roses are red, violets are blue, sugar is sweet, and so are you." Even then I would change the words that I would secretly and quietly shout to Arnold hoping that my feelings would resonate across the room, the hallway, the school, the city, and universe. "Roses are red, violets are blue, no matter what I said, I do love you." I definitely began to have fun when I learned about rhyming in class.

 

I've always been a rather precocious child. How do I know that? I mean I was young enough where I couldn't possibly remember little bits of information like this. It is what my neighbor, Mrs. Cardell, had told my mom. She had commented on how quickly I had learned to crawl, walk, run, speak and read. Often times Miriam would only nod agreeing but never fully listening. She was always too preoccupied with "smoothies", "B" and his anger issues, and Olga.

 

Mrs. Cardell was a very nice elderly woman who lived directly across from the Pataki household. I would do errands for Mrs. Cardell who would pay me with sweet words, a listening ear, patience and cookies. Her cookies were absolutely indescribable. No words could adequately describe the level of Nirvana I found in each gooey, chocolate-chipped bite. There was never any physical affection as Mrs. Cardell was not raised to give hugs, hold hands, or pats on the head. However since I was growing up in a similar environment I never paid much mind.

 

The type of errands I would help Mrs. Cardell with around the house varied from picking up the mail even dealing with Salty, a salt-and-pepper-colored cat, who had a prolapsed rectum. Yup, as a kid I helped push in Salty's behind. I didn't mind though. I would rather push in a cat's rectum than spend any more time with my family than I had to. That ought to give you enough inkling as to what my family life was like.

 

The fact that Mrs. Cardell would call me "Elizabeth" or "Lizzie" or even "Bethie" did not matter to me. Who was Elizabeth? Elizabeth was her deceased granddaughter who had passed away ten years prior. Mrs. Cardell could have called me Bucky, Jim, Lucy, or Josephine, it didn't matter. Sadly it only lasted two years during first and second grade. I would take every opportunity to spend time with her before a nasty cold had turned into pneumonia. I never understood until much later the full brevity of death. I only knew that one day she had the "sniffles" then the next week her son was kneeling beside me telling me she was gone. I knew on an intellectual level what he had meant but emotionally I refused to accept it. So I played dumb. "Gone where? The grocery store? She said she was going to make chocolate-chip cookies today because I had helped her weed the garden." I say it and her son shakes his head sadly, "No, dear, no cookies today." I see him fight the tears and I have no idea what to tell him. "I'm going to miss her cookies too," I tell him quietly. Her son smiles through his tears and kisses me on my forehead.

 

Mrs. Cardell's impression on me is still felt at this very moment. It is there that I was exposed to fine arts, a passion of Mrs. Cardell's. From the works of Edward Hopper (whose art I still find simple and still wonder about his female subjects), to the soliloquy of Shakespeare's Hamlet, to the travels of Gulliver, to the soulful crooning of Etta James, to wanting to bring up my own baby (Carey Grant would be an added bonus).

 

She created in me a voracious appetite to read, watch, listen and experience the world around me. I noticed the beauty of autumn in its explosion of oranges and reds. I appreciated the joy of ice skating and its soothing sounds of blades crossing ice. I learned how revitalizing petrichor was in the city park amidst the oil-slicked roadways, the whiff of exhaust fumes, the remnants of dog feces from owners who had not learned to bag and trash. I felt the relief from the summer heat by the opening of a fire hydrant. I felt the peace that would overcome me while listening to the concertos of Bach. I learned to appreciate, value and find relief in the beauty of the arts when my own world was overcast with breaks of sunlight being scarce. Yet I was afraid to show this side of myself to Arnold and those around me. I hid this part of me with mean words, threats and a scowl. It was around the end of first grade that Phoebe and I became friends. At that time it was a friendship of convenience. I needed companionship and she needed protection from the teasing because of her intelligence and glasses.

 

It was Mrs. Cardell who had given me the courage to go to the Hillwood library since I read her entire collection. There I would learn of Matilda whose family life was so reminiscent of my own. I had wished so desperately to have her abilities so that I too could have those adventures. I wished so desperately to meet my own Ms. Honey. It was there that I had decided to feed my mind with all of the children books I could read and eventually moved on to works of Bronte, Hemmingway, Frost, Byron, Dickens and the list grew on and on. It was there that that I discovered the world of poetry. And in that world I had found my home.

 

 

_**I Find You**  
-Helga G. Pataki, summer before 4th grade_

_  
_

_I find you in the hum of the city_   
_I find you in the moon above_   
_I find you in the sway of the sea_   
_If I could only speak to you of my love_

_I am touched by your charity_   
_I am touched by your worry and care_   
_I am touched by the goodness you see_   
_Crippled by the fear of being your bête noir_

_I see you in the heroes I read_   
_I see you being forever brave_   
_I see you as the prince upon his steed_   
_To this fear will I always be a slave?_

_I hear you in the sounds of spring_   
_I hear you in the chirps of a blue jay_   
_I hear you in the steeple's ring_   
_I must tell you of my love one day_


	3. The Poetry of a Repressed Girl

_Writing is easy. Just put a sheet of paper in the typewriter and start bleeding._

–Thomas Wolfe, quoted in Gene Olson’s _Sweet Agony_

_The three things that help writing the most are living, writing, and reading. In that order._

–Hisham Matar, in an interview in _Goldlink_

_Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart..._

–William Wordsworth

 

**The Poetry of a Repressed Girl in Love**

 

I would like to believe that my poetry was utter gold and more precious than the costliest gems. It was certainly what I believed when I was a girl. A part of me still believes this to be perfectly honest. However I’ve been struggling with baring the emotional underside to my, what appears to be, “strong” self. The interesting part of my poetry was that it allowed me to be open in a way that I was fearful of. In the world of poetry with its iambic pentameters, the free verse, haikus, the rhyming, the rhythm, the styles everything was a sanctuary for a soul that had little to rest or peace. Its structure is what gave me the boundaries of extoling my love in a world of chaos. I did not find rest and peace often. Certainly not at home with my parents and sister. Certainly not at school that held me in tolerant regard. Certainly not my classmates who I know begrudgingly included me at times and then other times I was necessary but usually to fill a position like catcher. I’d like to think that there were moments in my childhood where my classmates saw me more than as the bully and could sense the girl under the façade.

 

Poetry for me was a way to talk about my love for Arnold. I’d write, and write my love for him. I’d be hit by a barreling semi of inspiration. I’d write down phrases that I would finish into full poetry. There were times I’d write full poems on the spot. The poetry was full of eloquent phrases peppered with the vocabulary I’d learn through reading, the allegories, the anguish of an unrequited love, understanding love the best way a young girl could, and the symbolism I’d liken Arnold to. This extended to mythical heroes such as Prometheus, to physical attributes, to the traits I was so envious of because it was something Arnold admired. It was something that I felt an impossible impasse in which I’d never be able to cross. In return I’d then never be able to have Arnold look at me in the way he saw other girls, well, in one girl in particular. The one girl I hated because she was everything I was not. She was everything I wanted to be even it meant repressing the parts of my personality that I knew was naturally a part of me. The parts of me that was sarcastic, odd sense of humor, the sass and everything that seemed that I had allowed to spiral out of control. The parts of me that made feel so utterly ashamed when Arnold would give me the look of disapproval, the reproach or the inner thoughts of “why can’t you be more like her.”

 

It had made me angry. It made me despondent. It made regret so many times the harsh words or ambivalent morality that always felt inferior to Arnold and the girl he regarded as the girl of dreams. It made me do things I would regret in the end. I, on the other hand, always felt as if I was the girl of his nightmares. Those were the dark moments of my childhood. Then I drift through the ocean of emotions and Arnold would throw a lifeline that gave me hope when he’d see the inner parts of myself that I had walled around so securely. There were times he’d even find some parts of my abrasive self as funny or at least tolerable. Aside from Phoebe he was the only one that seemed to find the weakened parts and briefly get a view of the part of me I tried to hide so well. However my fear and anxiety would repair it so securely he’d wonder why I would, and wonder how far did the mushy part of me went. The times I’d felt relief as if I were in the desert who had stumbled upon an oasis. “Whatever you say Helga” to the times I’d build up my walls again. The moments I was happy to see that maybe Arnold would be persistent enough in seeing all parts of me and accepting me. Though I was always afraid that he’d be unable to handle me at the worst of times and reject me.

 

There was a time I had collected fourteen volumes of poetry. My soul was gushing forth the yearnings of my soul. I felt so utterly defeated by Arnold and the love his life, by my behavior and personality that I had taken a love potion, which turned out to be nothing more than, but my belief was so strong I had stopped loving Arnold. I had also rid of the things that I felt were chaining me to a life less lived. Life turned from the colors of pink, blue, purple to a muddled gray, everything blending together, the _joie de vivre_ was gone. Not only had my love for Arnold been muted but my love and personality had been dulled. I wasn’t the same girl. Arnold had noticed my behavior. My _lack_ of bullying had been unnerving him. It had been as if our relationship had been defined by the ebb and flow of my mercurial personality of cold, and hostile appearance to my brief cracks that showed the warmness of my soul. The part of me that I wished courageous enough to show. I regained my sanity when I realized the foolishness of the potion especially when fake and saw the horror of my books being burned. I managed to save some thankfully.

 

Poetry was the part of me that gave me the security I needed. It gave me satisfaction of a starved soul desperately needing nourishment. If there was one thing I am particularly proud of it was this one thing: I had enough courage to turn in my poetry for our literature assignments. I was even nonchalant when Mr. Simmons would read my poetry out loud. I felt a little bit scared, thrilled and elated when Arnold would hear my poetry. It was my way of telling Arnold how I felt without telling him to his face. It was the way I would tell him indirectly until I was ready.

 

It was my lifeline. That lifeline always connected to two people: Phoebe, my best friend, and Arnold, the love of my life.

**You are the beacon of my life.**

-Helga G. Pataki

_You are the beacon of my life_

_When strife pushes me to and fro_

_Like a violent cyclone—I’m gasping for air_

_In this violent whirlwind of fear, anxiety, and chaos_

_My ship creaks and groans in the chaos, I fear_

_For the tenuous sails that guide me, oft off course,_

_Oft in a place that scares me, to places that I wish not to go_

_Yet in the darkest nights, the in the stormiest gales_

_I find your light breaking through—It calls to me_

_It beckons me to the safer waters._

_You give me shelter in the coves of your unconditional love_

_I find comfort and reprieve in the blue lagoon of your eyes_

_In the curves and lines of your face that exudes_

_Such positivity, love, bravery, kindness_

_And compassion that you sometimes extend even to me_

_How I fear to one day lose that ever constant light,_

_That beacon that you’ve become_

_May I never go to such a place where I don’t feel you_

_And a place where you have turned off that light_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My goal is for about 6 chapters. I decided to divide the short story/memoir into the various expressions of love to what Helga concludes is normal to obsessive. The last chapter is going to be her future. Please read and review. I am trying to write the poetry but it's difficult to write in her voice. Sadly I don't quite have her ability.


End file.
